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Matt Worster - Mar 28, 2006 1:43 am - Hasn't voted
you're hilariousI love it. Absolutely love it.
Aaron Johnson - Mar 28, 2006 3:46 am - Hasn't voted
A Good IdeaGiven you're one of the most powerful members on SP, and you're vote is very influential. Hopefully it will keep you out of trouble! ;>)
Corax - Mar 28, 2006 6:17 am - Voted 10/10
InterestingA very interesting and unusual article.
I liked to compare my way of thinking with yours.
It can also be a good guideline for voters.
JasonH - Apr 6, 2006 6:52 am - Voted 10/10
Good jobThis makes me want to rethink every vote I have made.
Kane - Apr 7, 2006 1:35 am - Hasn't voted
HmmScott, why do you put so much importance in adding a second route? To go from a 9 to a 10 means someone had to climb the mountain by two different routes? IMO I find that to be an unreasonable request for other SP members.
BTW, I'm adding a Topo to my Star Peak page and the North Ridge is the only reasonable route. I also added the topo and the Getting there to the route page.
Scott - Apr 7, 2006 4:43 am - Hasn't voted
Re: HmmNotice that SP guidelines say the following, and that a 9-star is by no means bad:
1 The Worst. Ever.
2 Horrible
3 Pretty Bad
4 Below Average
5 Average
6 Above Average
7 Pretty Good
8 Excellent
9 Wow! Amazing
10 The Best. Ever.
Scott, why do you put so much importance in adding a second route? To go from a 9 to a 10 means someone had to climb the mountain by two different routes?
No not at all. Notice what I said:
1. These Mountain pages either have route information for more than one route on the front page, or have more than one route page attached, or have a routes overview with several outlined routes plus a route page. Exceptions are made for peaks with only one practical route.
IMO I find that to be an unreasonable request for other SP members.
I agree. With a mountain close to home, it is easy to ascend a peak more than once, but (for example) there is no way I’m going to fly half way across the world just to add a second route page to some of my pages.
BTW, I'm adding a Topo to my Star Peak page and the North Ridge is the only reasonable route. I also added the topo and the Getting there to the route page.
I changed the vote to 10, because technically you mentioned two routes with the SW face. The Star Peak page was and is excellent, and your pages are among the best on Summitpost. I did however have to write some sort of a criteria because people seem to like to question votes, and I did have to vote everyone the same.
Also, you do not have to climb a mountain by two different routes to add a routes overview. If the north ridge is indeed the only practical route, by your observation, just let us know, and that’s more than enough to me to vote 10 as per the criteria on the article.
For a page to be “prefect” (which I don’t claim any of my own pages to be), and since the route info is the most important to me, I would prefer to see a routes overview, even if brief, but this is just my opinion. A routes overview on an obscure peak with no other info available doesn’t mean that you have climbed the mountain from another route, but can be based on observation. For example, does a route from Cooper Creek to the north ridge look like a possibility, or does it look extra nasty and you wouldn’t recommend even trying it? Or was it impossible to make a judgment?
One some obscure mountains similar to Star, I have only been able to find one practical route, but personally, I like to point this out, and it’s just my own opinion which might be very different from your own. I’ll use some pages as examples (but admit your pages are better than mine; these are only examples):
The Cathedral
Like Star Peak, The Cathedral is hard to find info on, and in fact SP is the only place you will find route info on the peak. I could find only one practical route, and here’s what I wrote in the Routes Overview:
After several exploratory trips on all sides of the mountain, we were only to find one viable route to the summit; the Northeast Shoulder. Briefly put (see the route page for more details): From the trailhead the route follows the East Fork Bear River Trail east. After 4 miles, the route turns left here on the trail posted for Allsop Lake. After a ways the route scrambles up the Northwest Shoulder to the summit. The route is not that easy, but is fairly easy to find.
After much searching, all other routes to the summit seem to be blocked by cliffs, and the rock is not good for technical climbing. In July 1998, we made an attempt of the south ridge and reached 11,960 feet, but there were thunderstorms and we had to return. The south ridge may go if you skirt around to the west and around the buttresses, and by making the final approach up some western gullies, but this is unconfirmed. The only confirmed route I know of is the NE Shoulder.
The East Face Gullies are probably the finest snow climbing routes in the Uinta Mountains. It may be possible to traverse to the Northeast Shoulder Route from the northern-most gully, but I haven't tried it.
I also couldn’t find any other route info on Monte Roraima and any other route would be far beyond my ability. Obviously, I only climbed one route.
Monte Roraima
The Paratepui Route, is by far the most popular route on the mountain is is probably use by at least 99.999% of the people climbing the peak. This is also the only non-technical route available for climbing the mountain. The route crosses the Gran Sabana and climbes a rugged and slippery route to the summit. There are several river crossings, which you must do on foot (no bridges). The Rio Tex and Rio Kukenan crossings can be problematic after rains. The trek out to the base of the peak can be hot, sunny, and shadeless across the Gran Sabana. It usually takes 1 to 1 1/2 days to reach the base of the peak. The trek to the top and back usually takes four days, plus any days you may spend on top.
Other routes other than the one described are very seldom attempted. Rock climbers could probably find several "first" all over the sides of this peak. The mountain has been climbed from the Guyana and Brazilian sides, but I don't have any information on the routes, other than they are technical big-wall climbs and only for expert climbers.
Also notice this page. It was actually vote 3 on SPv1 because it only had one route page. On the other hand, there is really only one practical route.
Tajumulco
Notice the Red Tape section:
There are (were?) also rumors that there are land-mines on the mountain. Avoid anything that looks suspicious. Don't stray from the trail.
The heck if I’m going to try another route. Forget that, and screw anyone who down votes the page because I don't feel like walking around off the trail since there is a risk of landmines.
What I’m getting at, is just tell us that there appears to only one practical route on the mountain, and I will always vote 10/10 on such well written pages, such as yours. Also, if you could let us know what you observed by looking at the other parts of the mountain, this makes an outstanding page perfect.
PS, what do you consider a 10/10 to be?
Scott - Apr 7, 2006 6:06 am - Hasn't voted
Re: HmmPS, don't feel too bad about my previous 9/10 vote (now a 10/10). I actually have the worse rated route page in the state of Utah (at least ones that were voted on), hee hee:
Worse score of a route in Utah (besides unvoted ones)
Jeroen Vels - May 9, 2006 10:56 am - Hasn't voted
NiceThis makes this clear. I like the page.
BigLee - Jan 23, 2007 2:52 pm - Voted 5/10
Pointless"It isn’t posted for any other reason other than my own use to link to"....Why not just keep it on your PC then?
I don't see the point of this page to keep it brief.
Scott - Jan 23, 2007 3:24 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: Pointless"It isn’t posted for any other reason other than my own use to link to"....Why not just keep it on your PC then?
No, it is not pointless. When ever someone complains about a vote I have made, I link them to this page and show them that I vote everyone the same.
Some people get all upset whenever someone doesn't vote a 10/10 every time. That is the point behind this page.
Steven Cross - Feb 22, 2013 12:44 pm - Hasn't voted
Very Practicle, makes sense.I like the guideline and it's probably not much different than how I vote. Seems to me that others compair pages to the very best well written pages on SP such as Raineier or Everest. Those become the standard to a 10 vote and any page with any less content is voted less than 10.
atavist - Feb 24, 2013 10:38 am - Hasn't voted
Great contribution but why is it necessaryI appreciate this article. But I think it identifies a general flaw with SP design to allow voting on a 10-point scale.
Consider other sites that encourage user feedback for user-generated content. Facebook has 'likes'. Google has '+1'. This is a simple system that can recognize and encourage useful contributions. And guess what, there are no power points and people still contribute. Just imagine what would happen if FB allowed users to 'like' something on a scale of 1-10. The whole user experience would change for the worse.
A 10-point graded feedback system will inherently result in confusion and hurt feelings. Firstly by providing an opportunity to give low votes. This allows users to go out of their way to degrade the contributions of others. Secondly, every user will interpret the voting differently. A user might consider an 8 very good whereas the contributor feels that an 8 is bad. This is not good for the site.
In my opinion the only time that something deserves a low score is if it is wrong or plagiarized. But in this case a comment or note to the elves would be a better course of action anyway.
So given the current state of the site, this article provides some clarity for one person's method of evaluation. But even in this detailed article, Scott abbreviates his descriptions from 3/10 through 7/10. Think about why.
Scott - Feb 24, 2013 8:51 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: Great contribution but why is it necessaryGood points atavist. This article was written several years ago when the 10/10 system was new. I don't think the 10/10 system worked out as well as intended.
byates - Feb 24, 2013 7:54 pm - Hasn't voted
Not being repetitiveI.e Uinta pages, with the same info being copied over and over for each write up would be a good voting point!
Scott - Feb 24, 2013 9:26 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: Not being repetitiveThat's a good point Brad (and one good for a discussion for entire thread on the forum), but I think the only real solution to this is to have more members start adding pages to the Uinta Mountains (of which there are many still available).
Sadly, ZeeJay and I are the only members who have added any pages to the Uinta Mountains in many years. Unless you count Zenobia Peak which is marginally in the Uintas, and West Grandaddy added in 2010, no one else besides us two have added any pages in the Uintas since 2008.
The description of the Uintas I put in the overview won't change much because it is the description for the range. Also, over time as more and more trailheads are covered, inevitably driving directions will overlap too (as will approach information on route pages). Keep in mind too that before 2006 you couldn't attach one object (even photos) to multiple pages. In the past, I had multiple mountains covered on one page to avoid some of this, but they were recently split out which is better for summitlogs and peak list). On the Kings-Emmons Ridge, for example, for variety I was thinking that it might be good if they didn't all to belong to one person (a little variety is good I think), so I suggested that we (ZeeJay and I) split them in half (and we did so).
Here are the last two pages I added in the Uintas:
Dead Horse Peak
North Cathedral
As can be seen much of the description for the entire range is the same in the overview. On many pages, so is the information to various trailheads. Because I know the Uinta Mountains very well (I wrote a guidebook there and used to be a guide there as well), for variety I try to add as many different routes and approaches as possible, but inevitably some of the information will still overlap.
Uintas aside, the same is even more so about the Elkhead Mountains and not one other SP member has ever added a page there (and likely few if any ever will).
The Uinta Mountains are more popular than the Elkhead Mountains though, so my solution offered would be to have other members start adding pages there (I've already added all I can without finishing the remaining peaks I have left to climb there). Before adding more pages to the Uintas, I actually waited several years for other members to add them (I added no pages at all to the Uintas between August 11 2007 to October 17 2012; but hardly anyone else did either). The majority of the peaks aren't in any guidebooks either, so all information was written from scratch.
So my friend, my solution for you is to add more pages to the Uintas. There are several 12ers still available:
Peak List
The vast majority of peaks below 12K haven't been added either (and there are many interesting ones as well). I'd very much enjoy it if others would add some more pages to these areas for more variety.
Liba Kopeckova - Mar 3, 2013 7:41 pm - Voted 10/10
how about angry peoplehow about angry people who vote low on a page because they would like to keep it a secret? I had that happened to me, e.g. Telluride's via ferrata or Dry Creek crags. Some guy just created profile so he could vote 1/10 on Dry Creek crags because he wanted the area to stay unknown. Unfortunately for him, the Telluride outdoor magazine just advertised it too :)...
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